I've Given Up Giving Up

Gail Tate

10/22/2001

OK, admit it. How many times during the Oregon game did you write Stanford off? We know who we are. Most of us are the same lames who will insist we were there when Garcia's FG beat Michigan in ‘72, Bonds drilled #73 and Langford booted the Big Game winner in '74.

For shame.

Some of you shame-free types, late some
evening in the distant future as we all swap whoppers with
kindred spirits, might even insist you were there at Duck-Zero
last week as the refuse-to-lose Card hung around and hung around
and hung around long enough to hang one on the quackers.

Double-secret shame.

Hey, these people in Eugene are too much.I mean, did you hear about the roadside poster on the route to
the Autzen Stadium that said something like, "Bring Tiger
and We'll Beat Him, Too"?

Shame on them, too.

As for me, I shall use this pulpit for
purgatory purposes right now.My name's Gail and I'm
a recovering defeatist.

I lost count out of how many times I flicked
it off and flicked it in Saturday afternoon. You should see the
damage to the helpless little remote – not to mention my
screen door as I stomped outside repeatedly to regain composure
by howling epithets to the football gods.

It all began modestly enough.So sure
was I of an "L" after Fasani went down I geared my
emotion thermostat so low I need tweezers to pull it back up.I figured, hey, let's just get this one out of the way, and
maybe – just MAYbe – we can catch UCLA the following
Saturday taking us too lightly and giving us the chance to put an
even rarer, more valuable skin on the wall.

Yep, I'd get to know hunger and
homelessness if I had to write inspirational nonfiction.

But, injuries aside, as you watched Stanford
match the Ducks TD for TD that afternoon, something akin to the
old feeling returned.The feeling you had that day in 1990
when the Card looked woeful in the first half against Number One
Notre Dame, then hung around long enough to steal it from right
under Touchdown Jesus' outstretched arms.

The same way you felt a couple of years
later, back at South Bend, on TV, when Walsh II told anyone with
a microphone as he headed into the locker room at half-time that
"we're just outmanned right now."Then came
back to stuff the Irish again.

It was sort of like that….but
different.This was the football equivalent of the Rhode
Island "…and he was FOULED!" hoops titanic in
'98: improbable, implausible, and finally – indelible.

This one, properly rationed, can provide 99%
of adult daily requirement of inspiration for the duration of
this season and, perhaps, into the next one.Hell, it might
even turn me, and my screen-door slamming buddy Anne Thracts,
into friggin' cheerleaders.At least, accelerate my
ten-steps-to-clean-optimism program.